August 2013

After delivering a statement on Syria this afternoon, Barack Obama jumped in the presidential limo and hit the links. Via an NBC reporter:

The president has decided to ask Congress to authorize the use of force against the Assad regime. As we editorialized this week, "It may be that the president believes he ought to get congressional approval before acting against Assad. There is merit to this view. The solution is to ask Speaker…

President Barack Obama announced today that he'd seek congressional authorization for the use of force in Syria:

President Obama will deliver remarks from the Rose Garden on Syria. Via the White House: 

Barack Obama's former defense secretary, Leon Panetta, says the president has a "responsibility" to act in Syria.

Monday will be an important day here in America. It is Labor Day, the day on which many of us say goodbye to summer – the last holiday from work until we carve our turkeys on Thanksgiving Day at the end of November. Barbeques will be fired up, beer kegs tapped, the all-too-short leases on beach…

Kimberley Strassel: "A Test of GOP Resolve on ObamaCare: Congress begged for a White House handout and got one. Republicans ought to reject it."

When it comes to North Korea, it’s helpful to keep a simple rule of thumb in mind: don’t trust anybody who refers to the country as the “DPRK.” (That would be the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the country’s official – and yes, bleakly ironic – name.) Calling North Korea the “DPRK” is not…

Mugged by Middle East reality, President Obama and Secretary Kerry seem finally to have awakened to the necessity to act—unilaterally and un-apologetically. That's heartening. Still, do they understand that the American action has to be decisive? After all, as the late Mike Scully put it, liberals…

The pool report from Barack Obama's remarks on Syria (which were not played live on camera for all to see):

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on his recent trip to Israel and the U.S. stance on Syria.

John Kerry says that America's coming response to Syria is about preventing future use of weapons of mass destruction:

The White House just released this document, titled "U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s  Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013": 

Michael Graham, writing for the Boston Herald:

The State Department announced that John Kerry will speak today on Syria at 12:30:

The debate over what, if anything, the United States should do regarding Syria, and the crossing of the "red line," continues. Some of the support for action is coming from some surprising places.  Nancy Pelosi, for instance, stated that:

An Alabama restaurant owner says that because of Obamacare he'll be reducing employer's hours and that he might have to close up shop:

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

The Treasury Department announced today that the IRS would begin recognizing same-sex marriages:

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka did not shock the world when he acknowledged that, yes:

The Department of Health and Human Services released a statement today saying that gay spouses are now eligible for key Medicare benefits. The announcement is presented as "guidance" for "implementing Supreme Court’s decision on the Defense of Marriage Act."

The week started with the White House seemingly determined to punish Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for his use of chemical weapons, but on Wednesday Obama let the air out of the ball. Last night on the PBS Newshour he explained he may yet choose not to pull the trigger. “I’ve not made a…

The congressional campaign of former Georgia congressman Bob Barr received a curious donation last quarter--from a man who had been dead for nearly three years. Barr's son Derek responded to the questions about the donation to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jim Galloway.

San Bernardino is a smallish city to the east of Los Angeles but a judge's ruling yesterday that it is, indeed, insolvent will reverberate loudly across the country in all those jurisdictions where political power was bought by promises of future benefits that are now coming due and cannot be…

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, executive editor Fred Barnes discusses his recent trip to Australia and New Zealand and the his piece on the Australian elections.

Josh Rogin reports: 

The White House just announced two new executive measures for gun control. The announcement came to reporters via email. 

The state of Alabama received bonus payments from Medicaid for 2009 and 2010 that were a stunning 13 times higher than the state was eligible for.  So says the inspector general (IG) for Health and Human Services in a report released on Wednesday.

National Journal reports: 

Fred Barnes, writing for the Spectator:

In an interview with PBS, President Obama says no decision has yet been made on Syria:

Democratic congressman Jerrold Nadler appears to be warning President Obama in a statement released today on striking Syria. "Constitution Requires Congressional Authorization on Use of Force Against Syria," reads the title of Nadler's statement.

Mike Huckabee will endorse Mitch McConnell tomorrow in the Kentucky GOP Senate primary against Louisville businessman Matt Bevin, GOP sources tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

What does Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat, think the United States should do in Syria? No one knows -- and asking her only makes things more confusing.

The Washington Post reports:

Even as United Nations personnel are in Syria trying to investigate chemical weapons claims that have further exacerbated that country's bloody civil war, U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon was incongruously tasked with the celebration of the centennial of the Peace Palace in The Hague. After…

The Americans are gone but there is no peace in Iraq.  As Asir Ghazi and Tim Arango of the New York Times report:

President Obama and Attorney General Holder met with a group of 18 mayors at the White House on Tuesday afternoon.  The meeting was billed as a discussion "with mayors from cities around the country to discuss reducing youth violence." And although Republicans hold about a quarter of mayoral…

Reuters reports:

MSNBC's Chuck Todd reports this morning that the White House has tapped former President Bill Clinton to make the case for Obamacare. Clinton's first speech on the subject will take place next week, September 4, at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The man who bears the ultimate responsibility for the gassing of his countrymen in Syria has been told by the White House that the bell does not toll for him.  The Americans are coming and people will die.  But he will not be one of them.  Not this time, anyway.   

Get up to speed on the latest developments in Syria with senior editor Lee Smith in this edition of THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast.

Elliott Abrams, writing for National Review Online:

The White House just announced that the special envoy for North Korea, Ambassador Robert King, will visit North Korea.

These Obamacare navigators could encourage identify theft, you know.

The title of Ferghe News, an Iran-based website, means “Cult News.” It is dedicated mainly to defaming Sufi Muslims. But Ferghe News, following the ideological posture of the Iranian clerical dictatorship, also condemns the Saudi-based Wahhabi sect (historically the most violent enemies of the…

Criticism comes with the territory and President Obama certainly couldn't expect that he would be spared.  Still ... he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and was considered by many to be the hope of the world.  There would be a fresh start in the affairs of the world.  Including a "reset" of…

A Census Bureau report released on Tuesday says that the number of households with children under 18 with at least one unemployed parent increased by 33 percent between 2005 and 2011 from 2.4 million to 3.2 million.  In addition, home ownership among households with children under 18 declined by 15…

Secretary of State Kerry used estimably strong language Monday in a speech on events in Syria:

Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, is making the case that some "cyber" jobs need to be moved away from the Washington, D.C. area -- and to Louisiana, where those people might be physically safer.

In a statement, the Pentagon says, "the United States military is prepared for any contingency involving Syria." The statement comes from this announcement of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's phone call with his British and French counterparts:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is saying farewell today at a Press Club event in Washington, D.C. Today is her last day on the job, before becoming head of the Univeristy of California.

A local Texas affiliate, KCBD, reports that 49 employees of Covenant Health Systems will be laid off due to Obamacare:

Reuel Marc Gerecht, writing for the New York Times:

A Republican candidate for Congress in Georgia has received around a quarter of his donations from out of state--and at least one of those is from the grave.

A big group of foreign policy experts, from across the ideological spectrum, is calling on President Obama to impose "meaningful consequences on the Assad regime" for their use of chemical weapons.

For Obama, a different world than expected.

The Hill reports:

Secretary of State John Kerry says the use of chemical weapons in Syria is "undeniable" and that the U.S. is considering how to respond: 

Delta predicts Obamacare could cost its company $100 million:

Lebanese authorities have arrested two suspects affiliated with a pro-Syrian regime group in the bombing of two Sunni mosques in Tripoli on Friday. Forty-seven people were killed in the attack in the northern Lebanese city, likely retaliation for a bombing the previous week in the southern suburbs…

The British launched the opening attack of the 3rd battle of Ypres on July 31, 1917.  The objective was to destroy a rail junction on which the German army depended for Western Front supplies.  The plan included British naval as well as amphibious assaults on the nearby Belgian coast.  The naval…

The White House announced that Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton will be joining President Barack Obama at the March on Washington anniversary on Wednesday.

If overworked employees are more likely to commit errors, then the consumers who ended up with the meat inspected by one particular Department of Agriculture (USDA) food safety inspector may have cause for concern.  A recent audit found one Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) employee…

The New York Sun analyzes a recent New York Times editorial:

Eliot A. Cohen warns the Obama administration that simply sending cruise missiles into Syria is likely not going to be enough.

The bigger and more bewildering the legislation, the better for the Lords and Ladies of K Street.  So as Megan R. Wilson of The Hill reports:

The Department of Defense is looking at some serious cutbacks in its civilian workforce, as Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg writes:

Jean Bethke Elshtain may have been the busiest woman many of us had ever met. Shuttling back and forth between her regular teaching appointment at the University of Chicago and her settled home in Tennessee, she wrote and wrote—and wrote and wrote. Essays, talks, books, memos to fellow directors on…

Back when the mess that is Obamacare was working its way through the legislative sausage factory, warnings about “death panels” almost derailed the entire enterprise. There were two, somewhat related, areas of concern: (1) that Obamacare’s many cost/benefit bureaucratic boards would lead to…

A collection of wacky facts, bizarre nuggets of history, anecdotes, lists, jokes, rumors, and gossip, all organized into such chapters as “Food and Drink,” “Women,” “Animals,” “Mathematics,” “Athens,” “Sparta,” “Prophecy,” and so on, A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities embraces the weirdness that was…

As readers will know, The Scrapbook makes a good-faith effort to avoid end-of-civilization/apocalypse-now pronouncements based on the popularity of certain television programs, or scandals in sports, or other bits and pieces of evidence in the culture. So let’s just say that we looked over this…

The good news is that most of the nation remains as opposed to Obamacare today as it was three years ago, when the law was enacted. Indeed, most polls show the public even more skeptical today—as the Wall Street Journal reports, “public support for the law has waned and Republican opposition has…

After five decades of liberal antipoverty programs that have produced only failure and futility, it is more than time for a conservative response to the problem of poverty—one that emphasizes work, family, and economic freedom. 

Since the early 1990s the New York Police Department has used a crime-prevention strategy that it calls “stop, question, and frisk.” Accordingly, officers stop and question a person based on reasonable suspicion and sometimes pat down the clothing of the individual to ensure that he is not armed.…

The Scrapbook has previously commented on the “new breed of pundit/political scientist who seems to think that a pie chart is a substitute for argument.” Whether it’s the fault of an education system and corporate sector saturated with PowerPoint presentations, the increasing desperation of…

I found myself thinking not long ago about Helen Keller, specifically the famous scene in her autobiography where she describes cold water being pumped from a well onto one hand while Annie Sullivan spells out w-a-t-e-r in Helen’s other palm. 

In October 1968, Margaret Thatcher, then a rising young Tory on the Opposition front bench, appeared on the popular radio discussion program “Any Questions?” Among the other panelists was Malcolm Muggeridge, later a celebrated Christian apologist, then an ornament of both serious and satirical…

A stream of national security leaks has lately turned into a tsunami, plunging the country into the most intense controversy over the publication of government secrets since the 1971 Pentagon Papers case. As we wade through the issues raised by the illicitly disclosed information now flowing out of…

With California governor Jerry Brown’s having just signed a transgender-rights bill requiring public schools to permit boys who believe they are girls to use female lavatories and locker rooms (and vice-versa), perhaps The Scrapbook can be excused for expecting that he would also sign a bill,…

Elysium is another ruined-planet movie, the third this year after Oblivion and After Earth. Such movies come in two forms: Either the Earth has gone wild and uncultivated so that it’s entirely covered in grass and trees, or it has become a giant and overpopulated garbage dump where the use of…

The Battle of Bretton Woods sets forth in smooth prose and concise detail an authoritative narrative of the who-what-when-why of the great monetary conference of some 70 years ago. It is jam-packed with heady discussions of balance of payments, exchange rates, supranational currency, monetary…

Baltimore

The New York Times regularly churns out columns celebrating progressive ideas about parenting, and The Scrapbook just as regularly marvels at the willingness of Times readers to consume their terrible advice. (For a classic of the genre, we refer you to a feature this past April on the trend in…

The words “have” and “get” pulse insistently through Jodi Angel’s new short story collection. What you have to do, what you get to do, what you get away with; getting in trouble, getting used to it. Sometimes Angel even doubles up on these words: “My stomach clenched a little and I got ready to get…

The Supreme Court closed shop weeks ago, not to return until October. And for the third summer in a row, no Supreme Court confirmation fight occupies headlines. But in its absence, President Obama has thrust another court—often called the “second-highest” court in the land—into the spotlight. 

Remember Black Jesus? The Lightworker? The One? The next Lincoln, the Democrats’ Reagan, the neo-FDR? He is now standing next to Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, caught in a quartet of burgeoning scandals, charged with rewriting the facts when they became inconvenient, harassing the press, and using…

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz declined to comment on Anthony Weiner's bid to become the next mayor of New York City:

In a statement released this morning, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham call for the U.S. to "take limited military actions in Syria."

But preferably after the next election.  For a decision on the Keystone pipeline, that is.  As Zack Colman of The Hill reports

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

All is quiet on the Washington front. But don’t let the lull in partisan warfare fool you. In two weeks Congress returns from its summer recess, after hearing from constituents who hold the institution in lower esteem than used car salesmen, and view eating Brussels sprouts, enduring traffic jams,…

Matthew Continetti: The Clintons of the Hamptons.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama's foreign policy is viewed in the Middle East.

Renee Ellmers, a sophomore Republican congresswoman from North Carolina, has criticized a conservative group's campaign to get congressional Republicans to support defunding Obamacare by way of the continuing budget resolution.

Pete Spiliakos of First Things writes:

National Review reports:

At a town hall event in upstate New York today, President Obama called on a female wearing an "Obama t-shirt."

As reported on The Lead, Al Gore is at it again, going after the sinners among us:

Newly appointed United Nations ambassador Susan Power's absence from an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria has raised eyebrows and questions.  When pressed on the matter at Thursday's press briefing, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki…

To write about the D.C. Circuit this week is to join a much broader discussion about the court's role in American law and policy. Jonathan Adler recently wrote about the court at Volokh.com, expanding upon a piece he wrote for the Environmental Law Institute's Environmental Forum. Michael Greve has…

President Obama likes to talk about income inequality, but what matters far more is the actual income of the typical American.  And how has the typical American household income fared on Obama's watch?  Well, the economic "recovery" has now spanned an Olympiad, and during that time the typical…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Terry Eastland on his recent editorial about "stop, question, and frisk."

President Barack Obama defended the NSA surveillance program in an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo this morning.

Baton Rouge, La.

President Obama was heckled today at a speech in Syracuse, New York. But the "young lady" that heckled the president of the United States "was very polite," according to Obama. Via the transcript:

Ari Shavit: "The end of the world is starting in Damascus. If civilians can be gassed to death in 2013, we face the end of the world that purports to be moral and enlightened."

The boss joined Chris Stirewalt on Power Play earlier today to discuss Syria and the ambassador to the United Nations:

President Barack Obama is visiting Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York, according to the most recent pool report.

The anti-Christian violence in Egypt is "a modern pogrom," David Brog, the executive director of Christians United for Israel, says in a statement.

Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, has expressed herself on the alleged use of chemical weapons by the regime in Syria. Her venue was Twitter: 

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, on Air Force One en route to New York for the president's education bus tour, had some strong words to say about the prospects of those who don't graduate from high school, and also about those who complete high school but do not go on to college.  While…

The great recession may be behind us, but the damage has not been repaired.  As Michael A. Fletcher reports in the Washington Post:

President Barack Obama flubbed the mayor of Buffalo's name, calling him Brian Higgins instead of Byron Brown:

CNN reported this morning that anchor Chris Cuomo will be getting an exclusive interview with President Barack Obama tomorrow morning:

As the time of implementation (some parts, anyway) draws close, Americans continue to disapprove of Obamacare.  According to Gallup:

Christopher J. Griffin and Evan Moore of the Foreign Policy Initiative writes:

The Nevada AFL-CIO has released a resolution condemning Obamacare and demanding that the president and lawmakers change the law.

The White House released a photo of President Obama in the Situation Room on Wednesday with Kathleen Sebelius and other officials and advisors participating in a videoconference on Obamacare.

At 5:09 pm on August 21, Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted this:

Winston Churchill on the Middle East:

With the images of slaughter coming out of Syria and fresh evidence that the Assad regime may be using chemical weapons on its own citizens, it’s worth revisiting the case for intervention in Libya that Barack Obama made on March 28, 2011. At the time he spoke, Amnesty International reported that…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the recent RNC meeting in Boston, and the fights between 2016 contenders and how these debates help the GOP.

This week, the State Department announced that, in "an important symbol of our enduring friendship with Benin," construction has begun on a new $178 million embassy complex in the small West African nation, a neighbor of Togo and Nigeria.  As is often the case in the construction of new U.S.…

Marisa Schultz of the Detroit News reports:

Lame jokes ("gone to the dogs") cannot mask the demoralizing nature of the latest news of Detroit's descent from the world's premier manufacturing city to third world squalor.

To counter the persecution of gays in Russia, some in the West have been calling for a boycott of Russian vodka—the idea being that if things don't improve, we ought to hit 'em where it hurts. After all, Russians drink and make a lot of vodka and there was a time (in the mid-19th century) when…

The State Department Wednesday issued a security message warning U.S. citizens in or traveling to Cuba about an outbreak of cholera:

Louisville's WFPL reports:

Various sites are reporting that the CIA has finally come clean about its role in the 1953 coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadeq. Monday, on the sixtieth anniversary of the coup, the National Security Archive published on its website The Battle for Iran, a report prepared in…

Despite a law passed 15 years ago, some Internal Revenue Service employees continue to use the designation "Illegal Tax Protester" and other similar designations in their case narratives, according to an audit just released by TIGTA (Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration). While the IRS…

Google Glasses have been banned at the Guantánamo Bay war court, a Miami Herald reporter tweets:

According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is gung-ho for the Egyptian army’s bloody campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood. This, the Journal reports, “has pulled Israel into ever-closer alignment with those Gulf states.” Yes, concurs, the…

This Obama guy's starting to look familiar... 

A cartoon from the daily Israel Hayom:

Al Jazeera America has launched. Here are the opening minutes, featuring cameos by Hillary Clinton and John McCain, and a brief explanation of the new network:

ESPN reports that the NCAA has backed off and granted an indulgence to a recently discharged Marine and given him permission to play college football.  

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president didn't have a comment on the ongoing Bob Filner sex scandal:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith about ongoing crisis in Egypt.

As Obamacare's launch on October 1 draws closer, the Obama administration is trying to reassure the public that the program is going to deliver on the promises of the last four years. On Tuesday, White House Deputy Senior Advisor for Communications & Strategy David Simas tweeted (and the White…

Last week, the New York Times ran a piece on the dire demographic problems facing Germany. The short version: Germans aren’t having enough kids, and as a result the economy is in trouble and there are all sorts of logistical problems—vacant buildings that need to be razed; houses that will never be…

Organizing for Action, the group that was President Obama's reelection team, sent out a fundraising pitch to supporters that features the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.

For some reason, the president will be honoring a football team at the White House today.  It is not quite football season, yet.  The team in question has not been a team for a long time, and there is no particular anniversary occasion.  This is not the fiftieth year since it achieved glory or…

The office of the vice president announced last night that Joe Biden's son, Beau Biden, is in Houston being evaluated after "an episode of disorientation and weakness."

Josh Rogin reports that "Secretary of State John Kerry has determined that the four State Department officials placed on administrative leave by Hillary Clinton after the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi do not deserve any formal disciplinary action and has asked them to come back…

The White House announced that the president and his family just got a new dog. Her name? Sunny. She's a Portuguese Water Dog, like their other dog, Bo.

Whoops!

The campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe of Virginia has emailed its supporters likening Republican opponent Ken Cuccinelli to failed 2012 Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin.

In the ongoing debate over Islam and democracy, Bangladesh, the eighth largest country in the world, with 164 million people—90 percent of them Muslim—is, oddly enough, seldom discussed. Yet Bangladesh has been a democratic, parliamentary republic since 1991. The country will hold new general…

The State Department recently announced, "Women Leaders from Pacific Participate in U.S. Program on Climate Change."

A new poll commissioned for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign finds voters in Louisiana are overwhelmingly opposed to Obamacare. In the survey of 600 voters, 62 percent say they oppose the health care law, including 53 percent who say they strongly oppose it. Only 33 percent support…

The latest sequester victim: lawyers. As of September 1, court-appointed panel attorneys for the federal defender program will be hit with a $15/hour reduction in compensation.  The following announcement appeared Monday on the United States Courts website:

Michelle Obama is on the cover of this week's Parade magazine. The profile by Maggie Murphy and Lynn Sherr was hard-hitting: "Posing in the formal Green Room, she appears both relaxed and invigorated, embracing the undefined (and undefinable) roles of Spouse in Chief, Role Model in Chief, and Mom…

In the Washington Post this morning, we read:

The NCAA might just as well become another department of the government and build a lavish headquarters building in Washington.  Its bureaucratic culture would make it a perfect fit.  The complexity of its rules would make for a seamless merger. And the high-handed, arrogant management style would…

Even with all eyes turned toward Egypt and the increasingly violent rifts pulling that society apart, the region’s active civil war in Syria burns on. Last Thursday, the two-and-a half-year-long conflict touched neighboring Lebanon, again, when a bomb detonated in the Hezbollah-held southern…

Despite voting for Obamacare and the immigration bill, Democratic senator Mark Pryor is trying to move away from President Barack Obama. In an interview with Virginia-based trade publication Politico, Pryor slams Obama, saying, “I think that President Obama has in some ways what you would think of…

The boss joined This Week on Sunday to discuss Egypt, law and order, and politics:

The Chicago Tribune, the most widely read newspaper in the Windy City, editorializes:

Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika returned to Algiers on July 16 after three months in a hospital in Paris. His health will prevent him from running for reelection in April, and it’s unclear whether he can run the country until then. As a result, the contest over his succession is already…

No doubt, the bankruptcy of Detroit will have unintended consequences. But one possibility, currently under discussion, is especially distressing: sale of the paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts, which, unlike most municipal collections, is owned by the city, not a nonprofit trust.

The Scrapbook neglected to follow its usual practice last week and had a look at the reader comments under an online New York Times article. The Times piece covered the growing popularity of so-called electronic cigarettes (which Ethan Epstein chronicled in these pages a few weeks back), noting…

In one of his bolder poetic flourishes, General MacArthur once invoked “the sputter of musketry” to refer to burp guns and bazookas. His phrase had the élan of gallantry, even chivalry, to it, as it deftly sidestepped the new and very different realities of modern warfare. Some generations earlier,…

I imagine a world in which the “international community” provides universal education for all girls. Or where countries that deploy children as soldiers cease to do so as a result of moral suasion. Or where the global scourge of malaria is stopped with the passing of a unanimous resolution. Indeed,…

Sometimes politics is just “one damned thing after another.” But sometimes not. Sometimes those damned things constitute a trend and form a pattern. So it is today, with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

This is an age of mystifying book titles, including the one that adorns this memoir. 

Tokyo

Anyone following the news even casually last week surely noticed the long parade of Obama administration officials trotted out before the cameras to insist their boss, the president, has always understood the serious and ongoing threat presented by al Qaeda and its affiliates—emphasis on…

"Our new owner is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. No self-respecting journalist would shower the new boss with wet kisses, so I won’t. Suffice it to say that he has good values and that he was among the first to figure out a way to make print content (books and newspapers) available in attractive, easy,…

The Scrapbook enjoyed what might charitably be called a warmhearted chuckle at the news that President Obama had abruptly canceled his planned “summit” meeting in Moscow with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Even the reliably turgid language of White House press secretary Jay Carney was unusually…

Every spring the Office of Management and Budget releases the president’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. While Congress invites senior administration figures to testify before various committees, and the media pore through the document to elucidate the administration’s priorities, by…

Earlier this summer, Roger Ailes, president of the Fox News Channel, was honored by the Bradley Foundation. Ailes’s speech, delivered to a right-leaning audience at the Kennedy Center, was rollicking and well received, filled with red meat and barbed humor, and proudly pro-American. Liberals didn’t…

"Don Graham’s decision to sell the Washington Post was his reverse Sophie’s Choice moment. She had to decide which cherished child to save and which to send to the gas chamber. Don and the Graham family weren’t forced to make an anguishing choice .  .  . ” (“Selling the Post Was a Brave, Painful…

"I think I speak for more than myself when I say that the main reason I have high hopes for your stewardship is that Don Graham said it was the right thing for the paper. He said you are the right guy. That was enough for me. ‘Great’ is an overused term, and sports has rendered it almost…

On August 15, 2012, at 10:46 a.m.—one year ago this week—Floyd Lee Corkins entered the lobby of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. He was carrying a backpack that contained 15 Chick-fil-A -sandwiches, a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol, and 100 rounds of ammunition. Corkins has since pleaded…

In conservative circles of late there has been an ongoing conversation about a (seemingly) new approach to governance, “libertarian populism.” Timothy P. Carney, a senior columnist for the Washington Examiner, argues that “conservatives need to turn to the working class as the swing population that…

Americans may be having fewer children, but we make a fetish of the ones we have. This is obvious to anyone unlucky enough to have attended a child’s birthday party in recent years. 

Ever since state senator Wendy Davis’s unsuccessful filibuster of new late-term abortion regulations in Texas, the media have been, even by their own embarrassing standards, astonishingly obsequious towards her. The Associated Press actually tweeted out a link to their coverage of the story with…

Devious Maids is the Sunday-night soap on Lifetime about five Latina domestic servants who routinely outwit their wealthy, decadent, self-centered, materialistic, and generally evil Anglo employers in the Beverly Hills monster-mansions where the maids have been hired to do the cooking and dusting. 

'Two Jews, each with a parrot on his shoulder, are in front of a synagogue,” Hyman Ginsburg begins to tell his friend Irv Schwartz, when the latter interrupts. 

Richard III, last of the Plantagenet monarchs, was KIA in the Battle of Bosworth Field.  That would have been 528 years ago, come Thursday, August 22. The King is famous for providing Shakespeare with the line "A horse, a horse.  My kingdom for a horse."  And if you haven't heard Al Pacino deliver…

Democratic senator Mary Landrieu says she's embarrassed to go to places in Europe like France and Spain because some Americans do not have health insurance. Landrieu, who is up for reelection in 2014, represents the state of Louisiana.

President Barack Obama went to the beach with his family this morning, and now he's golfing with comedian Larry David. Via the pool report:

Louisiana Senate Democrat Mary Landrieu is doubling down on her support for Obamacare. She says, if a vote for Obamacare were held tomorrow, she'd again vote to support the bill.

The antitrust lawyers I have served as a consultant often have the same complaint: Their clients don’t know when to shut up. This was certainly true of the executives of US Airways and American Airlines as they touted the virtues of their proposed $11 billion merger. US Airways president Scott…

The Working Group on Egypt today released the following statement:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with R Street Institute's Lori Sanders on her recent story: Why the GOP needs a reform agenda for anti-poverty programs -- reforms that emphasize work, family, and economic freedom.

Elliott Abrams, writing in Commentary:

Big deal on Drudge yesterday about WWE wrestler Darren Young possibly breaking kayfabe and coming out to TMZ. (Although the timing of this suggests at least the possibility that this is a work and not a shoot.) Whatever. It’s been months since Jason Collins and the media is thrilled.

It looks as though the various state universities and colleges will have to place a freeze on the hiring of additional diversity counselors, compliance administrators, and the like.  

The University of Michigan consumer confidence number was expected to come in at 85.5. Instead, it measured 80.0. Off from 85.1 in July where it had, as some media descriptions put it, "soared" from June's 84.1 reading.

It isn't easy getting people to buy something they neither understand nor particularly want to own.  An example being Obamacare.  But the Department of Health and Human Services has a solution.

Word's apparently out that the boss will be on This Week with George Stephanopoulos Sunday, and we've begun to get inquiries as to how this can be. I asked, and Kristol explained:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report on Thursday regarding illegal trafficking in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps. The report showed that the rate of trafficking rose from 1 percent of total benefits in the last study…

Let's not get carried away with party makeovers.

Earlier this week, Maurice Bonamigo had strong words for the White House on its Egypt policy. “The Obama administration failed to assess the situation in Egypt,” Bonamigo told Egypt’s flagship English-language media organ, the Egypt Independent. “It did not appreciate the power of the Egyptian…

This morning President Obama announced that he is cancelling this year’s joint military exercise with Egypt, Operation Bright Star. It’s a symbolic gesture intended to show that, should the army continue to pursue its present course, the White House may eventually decide to suspend military aid.…

New Jersey governor Chris Christie reportedly impressed a gathering of the Republican National Committee in Boston.

The U.S. government’s decision to shutter more than 20 diplomatic facilities earlier this month was based on intelligence showing that al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri was in contact with multiple subordinates. And that intelligence undermines a widely-held assumption: Many have argued that…

Adam Kinzinger, a sophomore Republican House member from Illinois, told constituents at a meeting earlier this week that trying to defund Obamacare could hurt the GOP and lose enough House seats to return the majority to the Democrats. The effort, supported by some conservatives in both houses of…

Today is the one year anniversary of the Family Research Council shooting, when an armed gunman unhappy with the organization's stance on gay issues entered its building in downtown Washington D.C. with the intent of killing everyone in the building. The gunman shot FRC's security guard, Leo…

President Obama delivered about an 8 minute statement on Egypt this morning, then went straight to the links. Via the pool report:

In an interview with Parade magazine, First Lady Michelle Obama says "No" when asked whether she'll "ever run" for president of the United States. 

President Obama delivered a short audio-only statement on Egypt this morning, from his rented-vacation home on Martha's Vineyard:

In late June, the State Department issued a controversial report on Iranian activity in the Western Hemisphere. Its most notable conclusion was that “Iranian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean is waning.” Critics immediately pointed out that, just a month earlier, Argentine special…

Earlier this week on Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel program, Kentucky senator Rand Paul talked about how Republicans in Congress should move forward on Obamacare. The Republican senator seemed to endorse the strategy of defunding the health care law in the upcoming budget battle but indicated that…

As questions remain about the security of the Federal Services Data Hub to be used in conjunction with the Obamacare marketplaces beginning October 1, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has agreed to a settlement with the not-for-profit Affinity Health Plans, Inc., for the company's…

Social media resembles the halls of high school in many ways.  Not least, according to a recent study (and what would we do without studies?), in the transitory effects on your mood. As Geoffrey Mohan writes in the Los Angeles Times:

The good news is that most of the nation remains as opposed to Obamacare today as it was three years ago, when the law was enacted. Indeed, most polls show the public even more skeptical today—as the Wall Street Journal reports, “public support for the law has waned and Republican opposition has…

With the death of Jack Germond at 85, the great triumvirate of political reporting is now gone. Germond, Robert Novak, and David Broder were the Clay, Calhoun, and Webster of political journalism with their columns and TV commentary, but mostly with their dogged reporting.

President Barack Obama golfed with the Comcast CEO today, and now he's at his Martha's Vineyard house. The latest pool report:

Don't forget faith in God inspired MLK.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the case for delaying Obamacare and the GOP's plans for a proposed replacement.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Reggie Love says he and President Obama played cards during the Osama bin Laden raid, and that the president told him, "I can't watch this entire thing."

A member of the White House press corps had an important question for the deputy press secretary at today's briefing: Has Barack Obama seen the movie The Butler?

Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a central figure in Mali’s political life for over 20 years, was the winner in Sunday’s runoff vote in the landlocked West African nation’s presidential election, as his rival, Soumaila Cisse, conceded and congratulated his compatriots on a civic duty well done.

White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest released this statement on the ongoing violence in Egypt:

The Pentagon just released this statement to the press, announcing "Same-Sex Spouse Benefits" to "uniformed service members and Department of Defense civilian employees."

President Obama is golfing today on Martha's Vineyard. The foursome is made up of the following individuals, according to the White House pool reporter:

It is becoming increasingly clear that President Obama does not approve of the American Founders’ notion that Congress’s role is to pass laws, and the president’s role is to execute them. On the heels of his unilateral decision not to start Obamacare’s employer mandate on the date that the…

Political reporter Jack Germond died this morning, his wife writes in an email to friends. Politico reports:

The effects of the sequester would be dire.  Or so we were told.  The massive furloughing of bureaucrats across all agencies and departments would result in cutbacks, or even elimination, of essential services.  The bonds on civilization would be strained.

To the surprise of nobody, Cory Booker cruised to victory in the New Jersey primary.   He will almost certainly next win a general election and become a United State senator, a job that doesn't seem quite large enough for the man but, then, he is still young.  Booker may soon be the junior senator…

Michael Bloomberg: Stop and frisk saves lives.

Senator Harry Reid does not want any spent nuclear fuel going into that massive, and expensive, hole in the ground at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.  And he has been able to make sure it hasn't happened, though that was the reason for digging the hole in the first place. Still, an empty hole in the…

Even after a year of North Korean nuclear and missile tests, this year's State Department “Country Reports on Terrorism” makes the risible claim that North Korea is "not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987." It would appear that State's…

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf lamented at the end of today's press conference that no reporter cared to ask about Secretary of State John Kerry's travel:

Sequestration has been blamed for everything from cancelled White House tours to military cutbacks that threaten national security to government worker furloughs. The latest victim of sequestration, however, might have a more difficult time garnering sympathy: corporate tax credits.  The Internal…

In a report to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the Obama administration unequivocally denies the existence of secret detention facilities operated by any part of the U.S. government. The document is a response to "55 questions prepared by the Committee and transmitted to the United…

The chairman of Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign is refusing to answer questions about allegations the campaign paid for endorsements before the Iowa caucuses last year. Jesse Benton, a longtime Paul aide who is now campaign manager for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, has not replied…

Video of Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor praising Barack Obama:

This week's Gorilla Glue and duct tape patch on Obamacare will, as the headline on Robert Pear's Times article puts it, delay a limit on consumer costs.

The Washington, D.C. EMS ambulance that accompanies the presidential motorcade,  Medic 1, ran out of gas last week, just as President Obama was pulling away from the White House August 8 on his way to a family birthday celebration at a local Indian restaurant:

Hillary Clinton, speaking at the American Bar Association's annual meeting in San Francisco Monday night, botched the name of civil rights icon Medgar Evers. The former secretary of state and first lady was recounting the story of one of her mentors, lawyer John Doar.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attended a cocktail party this evening at the Martha's Vineyard home of National Public Radio host and special correspondent Michele Norris, according to the White House pool report. Norris's husband, Broderick Johnson, is a lobbyist who worked…

Peggy Noonan on how Obama won over the middle class.

Democratic congressman Kurt Schrader of Oregon said on a local TV show over the weekend that he is suspicious that the employer mandate delay in Obamacare is politically motivated:

Special interests—mostly advocacy firms and former-Congressmen turned lobbyists—drive Congress’s agenda and play an oversized role in the formation of policy. But the face of lobbying is changing, thanks partly to approaches pioneered in the last three years by Heritage Action for America, the…

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports today that sales of fossil fuels produced on federal and Indian land continue to decline, dropping 4 percent in fiscal year 2012.  The slide continues a decade-long trend that accelerated in 2010, as the chart accompanying the report shows:

Reuters recently reported that security testing for Obamacare is months behind schedule. And Michael Astrue, former HHS general counsel and Social Security commissioner, has warned in THE WEEKLY STANDARD that "unless delayed and fixed" the Obamacare exchanges will "inflict on the public the most…

In his Friday press conference, President Obama grappled with the tangled issues surrounding the collection of metadata by the NSA and the general topic of government surveillance of the citizenry.  He arrived at an interesting and somewhat disturbing formulation, as Dan Friedman reports in the New…

The White House wants everyone to know President Obama is working while on vacation. Here's proof:

An old friend, savvy in the ways of Washington, emails:

Reza Aslan's book on Jesus, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, has gotten tons of attention, and Aslan has gotten lots of sympathy, because of some of the questions he was asked on a Fox interview. We've already addressed some of the issues regarding Aslan, but now, over at the Jewish…

The Republican National Committee says it's putting its money where its mouth is by running paid ads against CNN and NBC over the networks' plans to run a documentary (CNN) and mini-series (NBC) on Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 presidential election, a spokesman for the RNC says. 

Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson reprints an email from a reader who suffered (and recovered from) two debilitating strokes. The reader explains how Obamacare's new regulations would have drastically reduced his chance of having recovered:

Good news for foodies.  Not that they really need any these days but ... still.  As Lauren Salkeld reports on the Epicurious blog, Epilog

The Weekly Standard has paid tribute to Philip Larkin’s great 1969 poem “Homage to a Government” before. In light of the release this week of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s strategic review laying out the dramatic reductions in our fundamental defense capabilities that current budget scenarios…

Through the modernist upheaval in American cultural life, with its earliest significant traces in the 1930s and an inerasable mark on the society as we now know it, three publishing houses were most prominent in redefining aesthetic taste. All of the trio remain in business today. 

'That will never work,” one cannot help thinking, as the late Earl Shorris retells the story of the first Clemente Course in the Humanities, or in “the study of human constructs and concerns,” such as political philosophy, history, literature, art, and logic. 

Tim Parks has followed in that predominantly British literary tradition of making another country one’s home and then making that home one’s principal subject. Gerald Brenan chose Spain; Lawrence Durrell and Patrick Leigh Fermor shared Greece; William Dalrymple has claimed India. For the last three…

Groningen

If you are a female performer desperately in want of an Oscar or an award from some critics’ circle somewhere, your best bet is to work for Woody Allen. Since Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall statuette in 1978, actresses in Allen movies have been nominated for 10 Academy Awards and have won 4 of them:…

In a newly released video, Ayman al Zawahiri, confederate and successor of Osama bin Laden, vows to free al Qaeda’s “imprisoned brothers” at Guantánamo. Seeking to capitalize on the controversy over the U.S. government’s force-feeding of some detainees, Zawahiri says the ongoing hunger strike…

Tax reform is dead. President Obama killed it, with an assist from Senate majority leader Harry Reid.

In his dissent from the Supreme Court’s recent overthrow of the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Antonin Scalia observed that the majority opinion accused the Congress and president who had enacted this law not merely of exceeding their powers but of spreading malice, encouraging stigmatization,…

The most interesting House primary of the 2014 cycle began in June in the 13th District of Illinois. It pits freshman Republican congressman Rodney Davis against an insurgent candidate named Erika Harold. Davis is a political operative who won his seat last year nearly by accident. Erika Harold is…

These days, the precocious teenage political junkie who lives across the street from me understands that the notorious intransigence and truculence of House Republicans can be explained in great part by their ingeniously gerry-mandered, extremely homogeneous congressional districts. Yet in the past…

During his speech on the economy last month in Galesburg, Illinois, Barack Obama suggested Washington should stop focusing on an “endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals.” He repeated the line about “phony scandals” in another speech on July 25 and in his weekly…

We’ve published quite a few criticisms of local “human rights” or “civil rights” commissions in these pages. And we’re going to keep at it, until they give up their Orwellian ways. Last week, Seattle city agencies received a memo from Elliott Bronstein of their Office for Civil Rights informing…

On July 24, the New York Times was granted a rare sit-down interview with President Obama. The interview was unremarkable, but that’s to be expected considering that the Times has been as sycophantic toward Obama as he has been contemptuous toward the press. The interview contained no inquiries on…

The Scrapbook notes with regret the death of two names from the recent political past: William Scranton, 96, the former Pennsylvania governor, U.N. ambassador, and Republican presidential candidate; and Harry Byrd Jr., 98, longtime U.S. senator from Virginia and, as it happens, avid reader of The…

One August afternoon in 1999, my parents and I drove to a farm in Leesburg, Virginia, to look at a litter of Jack Russell Terrier puppies we’d seen advertised. As soon as we arrived at the breeder’s house, we were confronted by Bunny, the long-legged mother of the pups. She was jumping in place,…

When he was sworn in for a second term in January, Barack Obama’s political standing was the best it had been in years. His job approval had climbed into the mid-50s—not extraordinary but solid—and he seemed to have the wind at his back as he called for a new era of liberal governance. Six months…

I'm showing my age again, but I can remember, just barely, when we had the war between men and women. Not a war, but the war: eternal and (of course) metaphorical, a fight without massed ranks of infantry or elaborate flanking maneuvers or formal parleys among belligerents. The opening salvo dated…

At first, it was fun—this parlor game of guessing who the Obama administration will appoint as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. We all assumed it would be Janet Yellen, because she’s a woman. And then suddenly we had Larry Summers all over the leading financial newspapers receiving…

For opponents of Obamacare, it almost seems like the law offers too many targets to choose from. Its effects on premiums and costs look to be highly unpopular, its perverse incentives are already harming employment, its state exchanges will hand out costly subsidies without the necessary checks…

Nancy Sinatra has been a good daughter to her father Frank—probably, in The Scrapbook’s view, better than the late singer deserves. Since his death in 1998, she has resolutely defended her father’s reputation against the dozens of stories of his coarse behavior—our favorite being a meal of steak…

For those who considered themselves men of the left, it was a staple of belief that the very concept of totalitarianism was deeply flawed. Marxism, it was argued, came from the age of the Enlightenment and sought man’s perfection in a classless society that would end in something close to heaven on…

July was the deadliest month in Iraq since 2008 and now, as Sylvia Westall of Reuters reports, 

The Las Vegas Sun reports:

Back in January 2012, Bill Kristol wrote, “Cancel the competition. Mark Steyn has already won the 'best-article-not-in-THE-WEEKLY-STANDARD-to-appear-in-2012' award” for a piece called "The Sinking of the West."

You probably know what NAFTA is--the North American Free Trade Agreement that reduced trade barriers between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. You might even know that TTIP is the acronym for Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a deal that would remove some of the non-tariff barriers to…

Harry Reid: I hope Republicans don't oppose Obama because he's black.

At a White House press conference Friday afternoon, President Obama said that health insurance plans offered under Obamacare will be "significantly cheaper" than plans currently on the market, but a string of recent reports say that isn't true. 

Over at the Long War Journal, Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio confirm the report that the closings of more than 20 U.S. embassies earlier this week was the result of intercepted communications between al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and several al Qaeda operatives. The story was first reported by…

Barack Obama, speaking at a Friday afternoon news conference, maintained that the "core" of al Qaeda is "on its heels" and "has been decimated" while admitting that regional elements of the terrorist organization can still "pose a threat" to American interests.

At his Friday afternoon press conference, President Barack Obama said he does not consider Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information, a patriot.

Gary Schmitt, on the five-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Georgia:

Portland city commissioner (as city councilmen are known in the Oregon city) Steve Novick may have been elected only last year, but he’s wasted no time in using his public office to indulge his personal crotchets. Drawing on his extensive experience running a business–which is to say, absolutely…

Secretary of State John Kerry met with a group of key Jewish leaders this past week, and was accompanied by the administration's all-star team on "peace process" matters: Martin Indyk, Susan Rice, and Ben Rhodes.

"When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it's no accident that

Lately, the Obama administration has taken to referring to "phony scandals" that have distracted Washington from the important issues--namely, the White House's domestic agenda. But a new poll from Fox News shows that the majority of Americans believe each of the four of the administration's…

This week’s issue of Time magazine features a cover story by Lauren Sandler about “The Childfree Life.” In the second paragraph, Sandler mentions my book about demographics, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting. (Now available as an audiobook!) Here’s what she says:

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama's failing foreign policy, the Obamacare bailout for congressional staff, the privacy concerns with Obamacare, and the administration's NSA surveillance operations.

Tom Cotton, the freshman Republican congressman from Arkansas, announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate earlier this week in his hometown of Dardanelle. Watch Cotton's first ad, which includes excerpts of his announcement, below:

A new poll from Fox News finds a majority of Americans--57 percent--say the implementation of Obamacare is a joke. Here's more:

Rick Snyder, the man who would reinvent Detroit.

A recent audit by the Office of the Inspector General for Health and Human Services found that in four out of five cases when elective surgeries were cancelled for one reason or another, Medicare still paid even though the claims submitted by the hospitals failed the "reasonable and necessary"…

Mark Pryor, the Arkansas Democrat running for reelection to the Senate next year, said job losses as a result of the downturn in the economy are "just part of being in a capitalist economy." Watch the video of Pryor's recent remarks to the Arkansas state chamber of commerce and the Associated…

Insurance companies are saying premiums could increase up to 400 percent as a result of Obamacare. Maryland ABC affiliate WMDT reports:

News broke Wednesday that, even as the October 1 deadline for Obamacare "marketplaces" approaches, training requirements for Obamacare "navigators" were being scaled back by one-third. With less than two months remaining, the Obama administration is also facing increasing pressure to make sure data…

A man alleged to be the campaign manager for senator Mitch McConnell said earlier this year that he was "sort of holding [his] nose" to work for the Kentucky Republican for the next two years.

Another day, another story about how Obamacare will hurt Americans who work at small businesses:

The Boston Herald reports:

In New York City, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the tests in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department. This was reported yesterday, by Javier C. Hernandez reports in the New York Times.

Nineteen conservative activists have signed a letter to Republican leaders in Congress urging the body to fight to delay all of the provisions of Obamacare set to go into effect in 2014. (Update: the number of signatories has increased to 33.)

In my recent WEEKLY STANDARD essay, “Privacy Be Damned,” I warned about the operational problems and privacy issues raised by the “health exchanges” that HHS will force tens of millions of Americans to use as of October 1 of this year. In that essay, I noted that “the HHS inspector general and the…

Racial polarization in politics is a two-way street.

The problems keep stacking up for the partial implementation of Obamacare on October 1. The Wall Street Journal reports this week that the Department of Health and Human Services has cut back on the number of training hours required for the Obamacare "navigators," federal workers who under the…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on U.S.-Russia relations and the Obama administration's al Qaeda narrative.

Bill Roggio reports at the Long War Journal:

Declaring his candidacy for the U.S. Senate Tuesday evening, Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas took on the charge that he isn't experienced enough and went for the jugular.

The Balkan republic of Kosovo has not been spared infiltration by Islamist extremism. In June, Imam Irfan Salihu from the historic and multifaith southern Kosovo city of Prizren—the country’s second largest after the capital, Pristina—was relieved of his mosque duties after delivering a harangue in…

You may have heard that last week Pope Francis said that gay Catholic priests were a-okay.

The 2016 presidential primary season doesn't begin for another two and half years, and a new poll from Rasmussen shows there's no consensus among Republican primary voters about the preferred candidate. Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, leads the poll of 1000 likely primary voters with 21…

Tony Stewart is NASCAR old school which means, among other things, that he lives to race. Even if it might kill him. He'll run short tracks in the middle of the week when the big races, for the big money, happen on Sunday and the prudent, strictly business approach would be to stay out of any car…

CNN's John King reported last night that the Obama administration has "at times" been "inconsistent, conflcting, and inaccurate" in explaining the Benghazi terror attack: 

Mark Pryor, the two-term Democratic senator up for reelection next year, says Obamacare has "been an amazing success story" in his state of Arkansas.

Some of the local newspapers on Martha's Vineyard report that island goers "can expect extraordinary and lengthy up-Island detours, after President Barack Obama and his family arrive Saturday."

A recent conference call among al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri and other senior leaders of the terror organization was intercepted by U.S. intelligence, alerting officials to the threat of an attack and prompting the closure of American embassies in dozens of countries. Eli Lake and Josh Rogin at…

A live event in New York City, sponsored by Concerned Veterans for America: 

President Obama tells comedian Jay Leno that "We don’t have a domestic spying program." He made the comment during a taping of Leno's TV show.

So much for "cheap" insurance plans under Obamacare.

Reuters reports that the federal government is "months behind" its efforts to set up data security measures for the state health insurance exchanges, set to open on October 1, as created by Obamacare:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with James C. Capretta, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, on his recent editorial and the vulnerability of the individual mandate.

The U.S. State Department announced today that it has designated a terrorist who has fought for the Taliban since the late 1990s and continues to support al Qaeda. Bahawal Khan is the leader of the Commander Nazir Group (CNG), which is “behind numerous attacks against international forces in…

The provision in the Affordable Care Act that was meant to ensure that all pigs would be treated equally eventually, and inevitably, caused the pigs to squeal loud enough that they were spared the pain. This Wall Street Journal editorial does the details nicely. But for the full flavor, one should…

In a May 30, 2013, letter to CIA officers on the ground last fall in Benghazi, Libya, CIA director John Brennan notified survivors of those attacks that congressional oversight committees remain interested in hearing from them.

Monday night, Alex Rodriguez singled in his first at-bat of the season—which for Rodriguez may end as early as Thursday, when Major League baseball intends to enforce its 211-game suspension of him that will include the remainder of the 2013 campaign and all of 2014. With the 12-time All-Star…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a copy of the letter CIA director John Brennan sent to survivors of the Benghazi terror attack:

Texas state senator Wendy Davis has become the most prominent defender of a right to late-term abortion. So following a speech on Monday, I asked Davis to explain the difference between an abortion 23 weeks into pregnancy and killing a baby born at 23 weeks into pregancy, for which Philadelphia…

The Department of Health and Human Services is beginning a public effort to educate and train Americans about health insurance ahead of the implementation of parts of Obamacare this fall. USA Today reports that HHS and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have launched a new website and videos (including…

Tom Cotton, the freshman Republican congressman from Arkansas, has a small lead over incumbent Democratic senator Mark Pryor in a new poll from Conservative Intelligence Briefing. Of the 587 likely voters polled, 43 percent said they would vote for Cotton, who is expected to enter the race soon,…

Elise Stefanik, a young small businesswoman and former Bush administration aide, announced today in a YouTube video that she's running for the U.S. House in New York's 21st congressional district:

Democrat Terry McAuliffe has based much of his campaign for governor of Virginia on his business experience, including his co-founding of an electric car company, GreenTech Automotive. McAuliffe stepped down as CEO of GreenTech in 2012 in preparation for his gubernatorial run. Late last week,…

Gerald F. Seib runs the numbers from recent Wall Street Journal polling on Obamacare that found "almost half of Americans—47%—now say the law overhauling the nation's health system is a bad idea, compared with 34% who call it a good idea." The poll is interesting in its many particulars to include,…

Bret Stephens writes in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal:

Washington Post to be purchased by Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

The closure of nearly two dozen U.S. embassies over the weekend came after the U.S. government intercepted communications between Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda, and Nasir al Wuhayshi, the leader of the terror group’s most dangerous affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according…

Texas state senator Wendy Davis spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Monday afternoon about her 13-hour filibuster of a bill limiting late-term abortion, her life story, and her future in politics.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the extended embassy closings, the global war on terrorism, and America's stature in the Middle East under the Obama Doctrine.

Texas state senator Wendy Davis spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Monday afternoon, talking about her 13-hour filibuster of a bill limiting late-term abortion and establishing higher safety standards at abortion clinics.

Last Friday, I critiqued a piece by Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan for inaccurately summarizing the media coverage of the IRS scandal. I encourage you to read both pieces, but in a nutshell Nyhan was arguing that the media had failed to report on new developments since the scandal…

A visitor to Richmond can’t leave without a trip to John Marshall’s house, a living shrine to the greatest chief justice in the history of the United States. Passing through the halls of his former home, it is as if the spirit of the great man is present in the articles he used and the rooms he…

Republican state senator Elbert Guillory of Louisiana, who recently switched from the Democratic party, has announced the creation of a new political action committee with the goal of electing black conservatives. Guillory will serve as honorary chairman of Free At Last PAC, which purports to…

Nancy Pelosi, while she was still speaker of the House and ramrodding the Affordable Health Care Act, famously said that it would be necessary to pass the legislation in order to find out what was in it. The bill was very long, you know, with lots of lawyerly locutions that would be deconstructed…

Details of President Obama's West coast trip this week, information usually reserved for pre-screened media outlets, were apparently inadvertently posted on the White House website for about 24 hours this weekend before being abruptly removed without comment on Monday morning.

The Washington Post editorial board criticizes the Obama administration's dereliction of duty on defense spending:

Arkansas' statewide paper of record, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, published a full-page Sunday editorial urging Republican congressman Tom Cotton to run for Democrat Mark Pryor's Senate seat:

In the midst of a fair amount of depressing news from Afghanistan (e.g., al-Qaeda backers get U.S. military contracts, U.S. cites “due process rights” as reason not to cancel), here's a report from the front that offers some grounds for hope.

Free health care will, of course, come with some heavy costs.  And not all of them will be financial.  There will be an inevitable loss of privacy and dignity as well.  You want the health care, buddy, then step on the scales.  And let's have a note from the gym where you are required to work out…

The indispensable online magazine of Jewish life and thought, Mosaic, is featuring a spectacular contribution by our friend, the French journalist and president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, Michel Gurfinkiel. Gurfinkiel offers a sweeping, compelling, and, yes, depressing assessment of…

The Fox News Sunday panel debates the GOP's tactical divide on Obamacare, including the boss and Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint:

For centuries now, humankind has struggled because of Adam's little lapse back there in the Garden.  As the scripture has it, God said unto him:

On Fox News Sunday, the boss was joined by Howard Kurtz, Jim DeMint, and Juan Williams to discuss the continued threat from al Qaeda and the closing of more than 20 U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia:

Is Obama lawless? House Republicans certainly think so. The issue involves the Affordable Care Act, under which employers with 50 or more full-time workers must provide health insurance in terms defined by the statute or pay a $2,000 penalty per employee. Known as the “employer mandate,” it was to…

Just out of college I ran into my acquaintance Mona at a party in Boston. She was leaving the next day for the house on Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, where she had spent her summers growing up. Mahone Bay was remote and beautiful, she explained, and no one had ever heard of it. I told her I had heard of…

The national limit on late-term abortion passed by the House of Representatives in June is a losing issue for Republicans, according to the conventional wisdom in the press and the Republican donor class. But there are two compelling reasons why the conventional wisdom is wrong.

What are we to make of Robert Schumann?

Edward Snowden has given the country and the world an unprecedented look into the National Security Agency’s post-9/11 efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. Ignoring the success of those efforts, critics from the left and right have rained down opprobrium on the agency. But the criticism has not…

It's been a while since Benjamin R. Barber, the left-wing political scientist and ex-Howard Dean adviser, attracted the attention of The Scrapbook. Barber is one of those anticapitalist types who is careful to disguise his unpalatable ideology in anodyne terms—see Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism…

The Scrapbook does not usually take notice of royal births around the world, but you had to have been in serious misanthropic mode to fail to notice the birth of Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge, third in line of succession to the British throne, last week in London. Whether he will…

The town of Kidal, about 200 miles north of Gao, the big hub on the Niger River in eastern Mali, is hot and dry, and its police and electricity function erratically. The town, whose population is about 25,000, fell under the control of forces hostile to Mali’s central government in Bamako, which is…

A band of Muslim raiders sacked Rome in 846 a.d., plundering the city’s churches and getting clean away with their loot. They had come from Palermo, in Sicily, which had been in Muslim hands for 15 years. Sicily was then on its way to becoming a predominantly Islamic and Arabic-speaking island, and…

On Wednesday, July 17, Senator Mike Lee strode onto the Senate floor and called for Republicans to defund Obamacare. His case was simple. If the White House is calling for a yearlong delay in the implementation of two key elements of the law—the employer mandate and verification of eligibility for…

Most critiques of environmentalism have become as dreary and predictable as environmentalism itself. Environmentalists, their critics (myself included) never tire of telling us, grossly exaggerate problems, promote endless bureaucracy, corrupt the law, and engage in relentless scaremongering—or at…

Eyebrows at campuses around the country furrowed with concern last week over an Associated Press report involving former Indiana governor and current Purdue University president Mitch Daniels. Indeed, “AP Exclusive: Daniels looked to censor opponents,” is one heck of a headline to hang on four…

Although Detroit’s bankruptcy is only a few days old, it already has become clear that it could bring answers to two very important questions: whether municipal bankruptcy law is a plausible alternative to either bailouts or decades of fiscal malaise for large cities that are sagging under…

Paris

A succès de scandale if ever there was one, Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth’s fourth book of fiction, will soon be 45 years old. At the center of the novel’s scandalousness, which recounts the 33-year-old Alexander Portnoy’s reporting to his psychoanalyst the emergence of his repressed desires…

I have been dismayed, but unsurprised, to see that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is already spinning the launch of its federal health insurance exchange this October. The federal and state “exchanges”​—​HHS recently rebranded them “marketplaces”​—​are a linchpin of the…

On April 17, 2013, Senator Max Baucus committed a classic Washington gaffe: He spoke the truth. Baucus, along with every other Democratic senator, had voted for Obamacare in 2010. Now, at a Senate hearing, he told HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius that when he looks at its implementation, “I just see…

Why in the world do we need yet another “new” economics? Jamming the libraries and the bookstores of the world are avatars of what must be every variation on the great themes of market and managerial economics. Scores of Nobel Prizes have been awarded for various nugatory refinements of the…

Smokeless, odorless, and, indeed, tobacco-less, electronic cigarettes, or “e-cigarettes,” in common parlance, are projected to become a $1 billion industry this year. Yes, that’s “electronic” cigarettes: battery-powered gadgets that convert liquid nicotine into vapor, which the user inhales. The…

Let me stipulate that I do not condone fraud in any form. Moreover, I assume all Weekly Standard readers are law-abiding citizens who would neither commit fraud themselves nor encourage others to do so. My purpose is to inform such readers just how tempting fraud on the Obamacare health insurance…

For most of those who were so hopeful when the Great Arab Revolt downed the dictator Hosni Mubarak two years ago, the travails of Egypt’s fledgling democracy have been depressing. Many in the West expected the country’s hodgepodge of secularists—the young men and women who were the cutting edge of…

At a dinner gathering in Washington last week, the members of Congress in attendance were asked if they think immigration reform will pass this year. The two Democrats said yes, the six Republicans no. 

Earlier this year, Mark Hemingway reported in these pages on the bureaucratic busybodies at state and local “human rights” commissions trampling all over the First Amendment (“The Sensitivity Apparat,” February 4). In the last few years, they’ve been particularly aggressive at enforcing an absurdly…

The Way Way Back, a little movie about a 14-year-old boy who goes on an extended summer vacation with his divorced mother and her belittling boyfriend, comes close to being a classic. Close. Which poses a dilemma for a critic: I don’t know whether to concentrate on the marvelous qualities it…

INTERPOL issued a “global security alert advising increased vigilance for terrorist activity” on Saturday. While the U.S. government has warned of al Qaeda’s terrorist plotting against embassies and consulates, ordering 22 diplomatic facilities closed over the weekend, INTERPOL is alarmed by al…

John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, sent a letter to each of the CIA employees who were on the ground during the Benghazi attack on September 11, 2012, inviting them to share information with Congress, according to three sources familiar with the missive. Brennan sent the…

Mackenzie Eaglen, writing about the weakening of the military:

Ten days ago, as John McCormack noted, in the midst of a speech about the economy President Obama mentioned some other issues:

On Friday, the State Department announced that 21 diplomatic facilities (now updated to 22), from North Africa through the Middle East and into South Asia, are to be closed this weekend in response to an al Qaeda threat. The State Department’s travel alert warned of “terrorist attacks…possibly…

Spare a bit of sympathy for the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy gurus. They have said they will begin to “taper” their purchases of bonds and mortgages when the unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent. So July’s dip from 7.5 to 7.4 percent, the lowest rate since December 2008, should edge…

Tom Joscelyn, writing for the Long War Journal:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Benghazi, and why it is not a "phony scandal."

During his visit to Pakistan on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry gave several TV interviews including one to Hamid Mir of Geo TV.  Mir's first question for Kerry concerned Egypt. The Obama administration has resisted referring to the military action in Egypt as a coup, but in this interview,…

Arkansas senator Mark Pryor blasts the president in new comments made to the Associated Press. "[I]f you look at the president's policies, he just doesn't offer a lot to states like Arkansas," Pryor, a Democrat, told the wire service. "He doesn't offer a lot to rural America. I've encouraged the…

Mitch McConnell says he’s committed to having a vote on delaying the individual mandate of Obamacare. “The individual mandate is the weakest part of this law,” said the Republican leader in a Friday interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “We should just, like a prizefight, just keep punching the…

Ted Cruz's office is circulating the following remarks made by the Texas senator under the subject line "Cruz explains Defund Obamacare initiative" (emphasis added):

Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, political scientist Brendan Nyhan has a piece dismissing the IRS scandal out-of-hand and gently scolding the media for for acting irresponsibly in their coverage. You get the thrust in the first two paragraphs:

As evidence of the extraordinarily sloppy drafting job that the Democrats did on their 2,700-page overhaul of American medicine, they apparently left congressional staffers out in the cold.  Just four days ago, the New York Times wrote:

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

Along with the usual tools employed by dictators, tyrants, and strongmen – torture, mass murder, slaughter of civilians by poison gas, etc. – Syria's Bashar al-Assad has gone digital and modern as Nabih Bulos of the Los Angeles Times reports:

The latest jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Secretary of State John Kerry gave several TV interviews while in Islamabad, Pakistan on Thursday, including one to Mariam Chaudhry of Pakistan TV.  One question related to the drone policy of the United States, which is extremely unpopular in Pakistan.  In his answer, Kerry seemed to suggest the…

On the cusp of the July 4 holiday weekend, President Obama quietly announced (via an underling’s blog post) that he had unilaterally chosen to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate—its requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide federally approved health insurance. Obama claims to…

Ramesh Ponnuru breaks down the 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls.

The pool report from an event at the White House suggests that a reporter brought into the Oval Office for a photo-op of Barack Obama and the president of Yemen wished the president a "happy birthday." Or, at least, someone offered the president good wishes today in the Oval Office ahead of Obama's…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Thomas Joscelyn, senior fellow at the Foundation For Defense of Democracies, on Benghazi.

Women Speak for Themselves, a grassroots organization of more than 40,000 women for religious freedom, gathered today at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. to protest enforcement of the Health and Human Services mandate, which requires employers (including some religious institutions) to cover…

A new poll finds 77 percent of Americans support either delaying or repealing Obamacare's individual mandate. The extensive survey of 2,076 registered voters found that 28 percent say the individual mandate that Americans purchase health insurance coverage should be delayed, while 49 percent say…

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The United States will "close an unspecified number of embassies around the world" because of "security concerns," AFP reports. The closures will take place on Sunday.

Thursday morning, the White House announced a new website to answer questions from businesses about Obamacare.  Valerie Jarrett wrote about the launch in a blog post titled, "A One-Stop-Shop on the Health Care Law for Businesses Big and Small." However, within two hours, the website had crashed,…

IRS chief Daniel Werfel says he wants to keep his health care plan, not switch to Obamacare:

Senator John McCain released this statement after learning the news that Russia had granted asylum to Edward Snowden:

Anne Jolis, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

The AP reports that:

They do, however, receive subsidies from the Department of Agriculture according to a recent GAO investigation that discovered that, as Mark Micheli at Government Executive writes:

Peter Flanigan--investment banker, philanthropist, aide to Richard Nixon, and veteran--died this week at the age of 90. Bloomberg has the story:

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has been leading the charge in the Senate to defund Obamacare, dubbing some colleagues skeptical of the strategy as members of the "surrender caucus." But speaking Wednesday evening to a group of more than 300 libertarian students in Arlington, Virginia, Cruz acknowledged…